Goodness . . . is everyone else busy too???

It's been forever since I've blogged on here. Sorry. School has been VERY busy this year. Between volleyball, NEASC, Harvard Model Congress, and teaching the new AP course, I've been running around my building all day (and sometimes night) long. :-(

Updates:

* AP Euro is going well. A lot more work than what I thought but it's been good. I've been told that the first year is always tough to teach. Sources on the Internet have been a god-send. It's been nice to teach the upper-level student as well.

*Finished up my JV volleyball season 9-11. Last season we only had two wins so to go from 2 wins to 9 wins is a HUGE improvement! I'm so proud of my girls! :=) It probably helped that I coached Junior Olympic volleyball last winter (I will be doing it again starting on Dec 5th - every Sunday between now and the beginning of May).

*NEASC (accreditation for my school) has been very dramatic and A LOT of work! I am a co-chair of the curriculum strand. The visitation committee arrives in April so I will be happy when this process is over.

*Harvard Model Congress has been keeping me busy too. Added a few more fundraisers and a lot of the kids are not using the fundraising to their advantage. It sucks but I don't want to hear it when their parents have to pay the full $450 for the conference when I've offered numerous opportunities for their kids to fund raise to bring that cost down. The students that have taken advantage of the fundraising have made out like bandits. A few of them will only have to pay $100 for a $450 trip (which is a huge savings!).

*I'm also a mentor to a new teacher in our dept. It's been interesting to say the least. :=)

Good news:

*I will going to Poland over April break. The local university and Holocaust Center are doing a trip to Poland for teachers with the focus to be on the Holocaust. I am so excited about this opportunity! I also convinced three of my colleagues at my school to go on the trip. There will be three Saturday classes prior to the trip to learn about the history of what we will be seeing when we are over there. We will be going to Warsaw, Kielce, Aushcwitz, and Krakow (the heart of the Holocaust). In grad school, my research was the Holocaust namely Auschwitz so I'm very excited to be going on this trip. My students are even excited for me and told me to take a million pictures! :=) And, I'm Polish so I get to go visit my homeland! :=)

*I will be getting a student teacher for the spring semester. It's a first so I'm excited about it. It's something that I haven't really felt like I'm ready to do in my career but after 12 years of teaching, maybe it's time? The student teacher did a lot of observation hours with me the past year so he really likes my teaching style and really pushed to do his student teaching with me. Nothing like a little boost to the self-esteem!

*My sister flew out for Thanksgiving this year. Thought we would start a new tradition. We had a lovely visit. Took her to a Bruins game (a first for both of us). Ate lots of yummy seafood.

*Will be going to Phoenix, AZ again for Christmas to be with my family. Hoping it will be warmer than last Christmas.

So, what is new with you? :=)

Updates: the life of a HS History teacher

Let's see . . . . where to start with everything???

*The Holocaust unit with the transition students was a HUGE hit! They enjoyed the Maus books. The English teacher and I took the kids to hear survivors of the Holocaust and Sundanese genocide at a local synagogue. The kids asked some great questions and were so respectful. It was great!

*I had the students create a Museum of Tolerance for their final assessment for the Holocaust/Genocide unit. Overall, they did OK. They had to create a visual about one of the genocides that have occurred since the Holocaust (Cambodia, Rwanda, etc). The visual had to educate people about their genocide and to also make connections back to the Holocaust.

*The biology teacher on our team is doing a DNA project related to Holocaust survivors so the Holocaust unit has truly become interdisciplinary on every level.

*The behavior of MOST of the transition kids has improved. Some of the students have NOT improved at all. So, we are at the point of just removing them from our classes. It's at the point where the other kids now tell the misbehaving kids to knock it off. It's actually sorta cool to see the kids advocating for themselves.

*My AP European History course was FINALLY approved for next school year. After all the drama with the school committee, they approved it. I had to go into the meeting and defend it . . . can you imagine? I get trained over the summer. I'm excited and scared at the same time. Excited because of the professional challenge of teaching an AP course. Scared because what if I suck? :-)

*Because I will be teaching the AP course, I have to give up the local history course. There is a colleague in my department that wants to teach it so I will pass the torch to her. Our teaching styles are very similar so the kids will still gain the same experience.

*My school is in the middle of the accreditation process. I'm a co-chair of the curriculum committee. Of course the administration waited until the last minute to organize itself. I have some dingbat colleagues on my committee so it makes it hard to be productive. Our committee is supposed to be working with the HS curriculum coordinator during the process. We are really getting some insight of how she doesn't do her job. No one seems to know her job description as it is so the fact that she is in charge of curriculum and won't let our committee access it is ridiculous. For example, she is supposed to print out every single curriculum of every course taught in our building. In three different conservations, she made up three different excuses of why it wasn't printed out or deadlines of when she would print it out for us. We then asked if the curriculum was electronic and to either email it or put it in the shared folder on the server. She won't do it. I emailed her some curriculum I wrote last summer and she NEVER even opened the file (our school email has the ability to not only see when and if the person read the email but when they downloaded the attachment to that email). And, she is not familiar with any of the curriculum in the building. She's a former science teacher so she knows the science stuff. The district created this job for her three years ago since they were cutting dept heads. She makes $87,000 a year and no one knows what this woman does. . . ugh.

*Coaching Junior Olympic volleyball on Sundays. It's been a great experience. I'm learning a lot that will help out our vball program at my school next season.

*Since the new year, I've been trying to lose weight. Eating healthier. More exercise. So far it's working! I turn 40 next year and I would like to be healthy again regarding my weight.

So, there is so much going on right now at school and in my personal life (don't want to write about it on here).

Overall, things are good and busy.

Only a few more months until the summer break. We can do it teacher peeps!!! :=)

Interdisciplinary Unit on the Holocaust

The English teacher and I started teaching the Holocaust unit to the transition students on Monday.


For the literature piece, students are reading the graphic novels Maus I and Maus II by Art Spiegelman. I highly recommend these novels! Students that tend to not enjoy reading will usually read these novels. Spiegelman does an amazing job telling the story of his father ( a Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz) and the struggling relationship between a father and a son.


There are so great teaching activities on these fantastic novels:
Maus in the Classroom
Random House Teaching Guide for Maus I
WebEnglish Teacher
ReadWriteThink Lesson


Teaching Activities on the Holocaust:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Education World: Teaching the Holocaust
A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
Federal Resources for Educational Excellence


Movies about the Holocaust:
The Pianist
Schindler's List
Life is Beautiful
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
And many more!

For the most part, most of the students are enjoying the books and the history that is being taught in this unit. They are asking a lot of questions and are VERY curious about this topic. The few that are not enjoying the unit are the kids that just don't buy into school anyway. Those kids have done nothing all school year and just don't want to be in school. The transition teachers have done everything possible to get the kids to buy into school. We've been working hard in working on the social and behavior issues with these kids. Most of the students are FINALLY "getting it" and behaving (almost) like high school students instead of elementary students.

We also have the adjustment counselor working with the students more during this unit since the topic can bring up some serious issues with this type of student population. So far, everyone seems to be doing OK with topic.

I know that we as educators can't save all of our students from dropping out of school or caring about their futures. It's just so frustrating at times that some students just don't seem to understand that education (at least their high school diploma) is their key to their future.

My final assessment for this unit will be for the students to create a Museum of Toleration based on what they learned from the Holocaust unit. They will look at the topic of genocide since 1945 and pick a topic, research it, and then present their findings in some visual way (poster, PowerPoint, collage, etc). We will have their projects on display either in the library or in the hallway. This is the plan anyway. I still have to work out the actual details of the assessment. The English teacher and I will be assessing the projects.

I will try and post throughout the unit how things are going and any concerns that begin to come up.